‘A vision showing how key organisations in the health and care system will join forces to address sustainability challenges, potentially saving millions of pounds’, is how NHS England and Public Health England described the new Sustainability Strategy for 2014-2020 on its launch in late January.
Sustainable, Resilient, Healthy People & Places – A Sustainable Development Strategy for the NHS, Public Health and Social Care system was launched by speakers including NHS England CEO, David Nicholson, and his Public Health England counterpart, David Selbie, at Westminster Central Hall in London on 29 January. Comprising a main Strategy document and five accompanying ‘modules’ focusing on priority areas, the blueprint was compiled by the Sustainable Development Unit following a wide-ranging consultation last year that drew almost 1,000 responses – including from 55 per cent of all English NHS Trusts, a third of the new Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), and a similar number of English local authorities. The introduction explains that, ‘as current discussions, including the NHS Call to Action, explore how to achieve the best possible health and care outcomes within the financial resources available’, the following elements will need to be factored in:
• The environmental impact of the health and care system, and the potential health ‘co-benefits’ of minimising this.
• How the health and care system needs to ‘adapt and react’ to climate change, including preparing for, and responding to, ‘extreme events’.
• How the NHS, public health, and social care system can ‘maximise every opportunity to improve economic, social, and environmental sustainability’.
The Strategy sets out three ‘goals’ based on a ‘vision’ of ‘a sustainable health and care system that works within the available environmental and social resources, to protect and improve health now, and in future generations’. Achieving this will, the protagonists say, mean ‘working to reduce emissions, minimising waste and pollution, making the best use of scarce resources; building resilience to a changing climate, and nurturing community strengths and assets’. The three overarching ‘goals’ are:
• A healthier environment.
• Communities and services ready and resilient for changing times and climates.
• Every opportunity contributes to healthy lives, healthy communities, and healthy environments.
Speaking at the launch, David Nicholson and David Selbie said: “For the first time we are developing an approach to sustainability that embraces the entire health and care system, not just one part of it. Local government, public health, social care, professional bodies, and NHS colleagues, have contributed to, and support, this approach.”
